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Pamela Courson

Pamela Susan Courson (December 22, 1946 – April 25, 1974) was the long-term companion of Jim Morrison, singer of The Doors. After the deaths of Morrison and Courson, her parents petitioned an out-of-state court to declare that the couple had a common-law marriage

In his 1998 memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors, former keyboardist Ray Manzarek stated that Courson and Morrison met at a nightclub called London Fog on the Sunset Strip in 1965, while she was an art student at Los Angeles City College. Courson's relationship with Morrison was tumultuous with loud arguments and repeated infidelities by both partners.

Courson briefly operated Themis, a fashion boutique that Morrison bought for her.Her death certificate lists her occupation as "women’s apparel".

On July 3, 1971, Courson found Morrison dead in the bathtub of their apartment in Paris, France. The official coroner's report listed his cause of death as heart failure, although no autopsy was performed. Questions persist over the actual cause of death. Under Morrison's will, which stated that he was "an unmarried person", Courson inherited his entire fortune. Lawsuits against theestate would tie up her quest for inheritance for the next two years. Courson did not remain in contact with the remaining Doors members after she received her share of Morrison's royalties.

After Morrison's death, Courson became a recluse in Los Angeles, using heroin and showing signs of mental instability. In his follow-up book to the seminal Jim Morrison biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive, Jerry Hopkins mentions that Courson might have prostituted herself after Morrison's death, probably to keep up with the costly lifestyle she was used to, and was apparentlypimped by a former Doors chauffeur. Doors historian Danny Sugerman became friendly with her in Los Angeles after Morrison's death. Many years later he wrote in Wonderland Avenue that Courson's heroin addiction progressed to the point that when she smuggled her drugs in her car she hid them in different-colored balloons.[3] She planned to swallow them if an officer pulled her over, and to "shit them out" upon returning home.[4]

On April 25, 1974, Courson died of a heroin overdose on the living room couch at the Los Angeles apartment she shared with two male friends. A neighbor said she had talked about looking forward to seeing Morrison again soon. Her parents intended that she be buried next to Morrison at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, and they listed this location as the place of burial on her death certificate, but due to legal complications with transporting the body to France, her remains were buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California, under the name Pamela Susan Morrison. Several months after her death, her parents, Columbus and Peny Courson, inherited Morrison's fortune. Morrison's parents later contested their executorship of the estate.

In his will, made in Los Angeles County on February 12, 1969, Morrison left his entire estate to Courson, also naming her co-executor with his attorney, Max Fink.

When Courson died, a battle ensued between Morrison's and Courson's parents over who had legal claim to Morrison's estate. On his death, his property became Courson's; on her death, her property passed to her next heirs at law, her parents. Morrison's parents contested the will under which Courson and subsequently her parents had inherited their son’s property.

To bolster their positions, Courson’s parents presented an unsigned document that they claimed Pam Courson had acquired in Colorado, apparently an application for a declaration that she and Morrison had contracted a common-law marriage under the laws of that state. The ability to contract a common-law marriage was abolished in California in 1896, but the state's conflict of lawsrules provided for recognition of common-law marriages lawfully contracted in foreign jurisdictions. Colorado was one of the 11 U.S. jurisdictions that still recognized common-law marriage. As long as a common-law marriage was lawfully contracted under Colorado law, it was recognized as a marriage under California law. However, neither Morrison nor Courson had signed the document, nor was there any proof that either of the deceased had even been aware of the document's existence. Neither Morrison nor Courson was ever a resident of Colorado.

Whatever the circumstances of the unsigned document, the court case, and the controversy surrounding it, the California probate court decided that Courson and Morrison had a common-law marriage under the laws of Colorado. The effect of the court ruling was to close probate of Morrison's and Courson's estates and to reinforce the Courson family's hold on the inheritance.